But God Can Be Funny
by Hilary Chuff
Summary: It's 2005 and the dead are returning to life. Resurrection AU.
1. Chapter 1

When she opens her eyes it's green all around her, bright, verdant, and for a second she thinks the curse must take longer than everyone's always said. They always said it would be instant, and painless, and it's true that nothing hurts but it's also not true that she doesn't feel anything. She can feel something soft and wet against her cheek and something crawling along her ankle and it's only as the brightness starts to fade that she realizes it's not the burning, blinding light of the curse she sees, it's grass on the ground and leaves on the trees and moss swallowing up their trunks.

The soft, wet against her cheek is the mulch on the forest floor, the crawling along her ankle some beetle she reaches up to swat away, and though she was so sure that what she was seeing was the light from his wand, it still takes her a minute to remember where she'd been, whose wand it was and why.

She sits up then, suddenly, dirt smudged across her face and grass in her hair because she's in the middle of a forest. It doesn't make sense. She'd been in her living room one moment and then it had all been so quick, the door splintering in and James in the front room, her feet crashing on the stairs and Harry's door slamming behind her. She'd shoved everything she could reach in front of it, as if that could stop him, but it had only paused him for a second before he was standing before her and she was crying, tears and snot smearing her face, her hands up and pleading with him and then there was that bright, green light. And then she was here.

The only explanation is that the curse must've backfired somehow, must've broken and sent her spinning through space to land here in the forest, tree roots creeping out towards her like fingers and mushrooms sprouting up around her. She can't tell whether she's been asleep or just thrown, but there's a chance she couldn't have been gone long, she can still get back to the house, can maybe still stop him, save Harry, do something, and before she knows it she's balling her fists and squeezing her eyes shut and focusing on finding that vibration in the air that she can slip through, that'll crack shut behind her and open up for her in Godric's Hollow, where her house is, where her son is, where he is and where she can stop him.

She hadn't considered where she was or how far it was from the house and when she finally stumbles onto the street a block from the house her head is spinning violently and she almost needs to stop to vomit right then, but there's no time because if she's fast maybe she can still save him, can still stop him. She lurches into a run despite the way the world tilts under her feet and she weaves side to side down the block but she still makes it without falling, and there's the house, there it is, just a few steps until suddenly –

It's not the house anymore. It's ruins, the roof fallen through in several spots and the support beams exposed. There's the door, shattered in, but cobwebs stretch between the splinters and she must be too late, it doesn't make sense, but as she throws herself into the mess she still can't help but think how things shouldn't be so dusty, so untouched. It doesn't occur to her until she's halfway up the stairs that, dead or alive, there hadn't been James in the front room, in the front room where he'd gone to meet him, to save them, to sacrifice himself. Maybe the same thing happened, she thinks hopefully, maybe he's in the forest too, and she keeps moving to Harry's room, doesn't let herself slow down until she's standing there and it's clear that this is where it happened, this is where there was whatever it was that made the house like this because the room itself is completely destroyed. There's nothing left of Harry's crib but wood chips and he's nowhere in them, there's no sign of him or anyone or anything having been in this house for years and something strange and dark curls in her belly. It doesn't make sense.

She backs out of the house more slowly than she came in, but she still doesn't stop. Hogwarts, she thinks, Dumbledore will understand, will know something. His wards will have gone off and he'll have realized that something's happened. Maybe he's been here, maybe he found Harry, maybe she was too late to save him herself but maybe he wasn't. She stumbles the block away from the building and closes her eyes and swallows hard and she's outside the gates, pushing them open enough to squeeze through the cracks where the chain doesn't hold them completely shut and then she's sprinting up the grounds, her hands grasping at the large oak doors and prying them open.

There's no one inside really, no students, and again she can't help thinking that something is wrong here, something is off – It's October, there should be students all around, clogging the halls and the stairways, but everything is clear and empty until she reaches the right hallway and then the only thing in her way is the gargoyle statue and as much as she screams at it, screams loud enough for Dumbledore to hear her up the stairwell, screams every bloody candy Muggle or otherwise that she can think of it refuses to move.

There are footsteps to her right but she can't stop to look at them, she just keeps shouting until her voice is almost nothing, guessing passwords until the footsteps fade away and whoever was there is gone. She can't think of anything else, any other sweets and she realizes as she starts guessing anything, guessing soups and pot pies and colors and shapes and any word that she can think of that Dumbledore's ever said that she's on her knees. That's when she hears footsteps again and this time they don't stop until they're only a few feet away and she can practically feel the wand in the man's hand even though he hasn't trained it on her yet.

Her throat aches and she sighs, deep and heavy, before she turns to look at him. There's something familiar there that she can't place, something about the set of his cheekbones and the curve of his jaw, and she can't stop looking at him, heavy and silent, until she finally manages to rasp out, "Where's Dumbledore?"

"Dead," he answers, and she can feel what little wind was left in her sails breezing by. "He died eight years ago. What's your name?"

It doesn't make any sense, none of it, but she has nothing left to fight it with now, nothing left to hold on to, and she leans forward to press her palms to the cool stone, to rest her forehead on it. Her voice is rough and weak and it takes all she has left to gather herself back up from the floor and sit on her heels instead and when she finally speaks all she can manage is one word. "Lily."

"Let's go to my office, Lily."

She follows him.


	2. Chapter 2

He leads her out of the castle and across the grounds to the greenhouses. His office is attached to one of them, stuck to the side like a second thought, and it's just shy of being too warm and humid inside the room. He pulls out the chair for her before moving behind the desk and she feels small again, like a student called to the professor's office, like she's forgotten some assignment or done abysmally on an exam and needs a talking to.

She sits quietly as he mulls around, pulling something out of the drawers and casting a quick few spells before he's setting a mug of hot mulled wine and honey in front of her. Her throat is too sore and she's too tired to mistrust him and her hands find the mug quickly, fingers curling around it as she takes a few calming sips.

"How's that?" he asks and her throat feels better already – he enchanted it, she'd seen and she hadn't known how exactly but she's thankful for it – and she feels calmer, more sure though no less confused.

"I spoke with Dumbledore last week. What do you mean he's been dead for eight years?" she asks by way of an answer, sitting straighter in her chair and determined to regather her strength, her focus.

The man looks at her and she can't quite put words to the expression he wears, not quite sad or pained, more nostalgic than anything else, but still entirely different. He clears his throat, adjusts the Daily Prophet at the corner of his desk before he continues.

"Headmaster Dumbledore died in June of 1997 during an attack on the school." His voice is steady, careful as he explains, and he watches for her reaction before he continues, reaching for the Prophet and laying it out on the desk in front of her. "That was just over eight years ago."

She looks down at the paper, silent and solemn, and sure enough the date reads July 13, 2005. And then there's the headline: "Identity of Bristol Man, Seventh Returned, Verified by Ministry"

"Seventh returned?" They're the only words she can manage as she carefully picks up the paper, as if to make sure it's real, as if to make sure it's actually there. It could still be fake, of course, this could all be fake, some sort of strange joke, but if the killing curse had backfired it makes just as much sense to send her through time as it does to send her through space.

"Do you remember a man named Ellwood Thomelson? He was murdered by Death Eaters in 1976."

Again he seems to be waiting for her to say something, and she shifts uncomfortably in her seat as if that could help her remember one name out of hundreds. "There were so many..." she starts, lifting one shoulder up in some sort of tense shrug, but he's already waving the question off, wearing some sort of tight polite smile, and she thinks it might be meant to be apologetic. She can still feel it, though, the guilt pooling in the pit of her stomach, that sour taste at the back of her throat. She should remember him. He was someone, and he was murdered, and she'd read the newspapers in school and heard the reports but if she'd committed every name to memory, every soul to heart then she would've never been able to fight, too weighed down and heavy with some strange family's grief.

"Last month, Ellwood Thomelson... came home," he says by way of explanation, and she can tell he's struggling to find the words but she has nothing to give. "He died almost thirty years ago and then in June he just walked into his old house as if he were coming home from a day at work. And he's not the only one - after him, six more people who were murdered over the last forty years have returned."

She nods a little as if she understands, but all she can hear is that one word, repeating itself over and over and over again, growing larger and heavier and thicker until it fills every thought.

"I was murdered," she says, as if acknowledging it out loud might change anything, make it more or less true, more or less real. She can hardly focus on anything else, the word and his voice and that flash of green spinning through her mind, and somewhere deep in her bones she knew, she knew from the beginning, but to be sitting here and have been murdered both - but then of course the curse hadn't backfired. There had never been a case of the curse being anything less than completely lethal, and to think that she, that her family would be the exception - she aches with the knowledge for James, herself, Harry, and it pounds so hard and hurting against her ribs that she almost misses what he says.

"But you've returned. More and more people are coming back, popping up all over the country - it seems like there's at least two a week coming back these days, wandering out of parks and forests and alleys in the city, and you, you're sitting right here -"

"My son," she cuts him off, sudden and sharp, her hands white-knuckled and gripping the edge of the table. The soreness in her throat is back, and she swallows hard to rid herself of it, to keep going despite the way the words scrape out. "My son Harry is just a baby - if he comes back somewhere without anyone around, without someone to find him -" She can't finish the thought, doesn't know how, and she has to navigate around the words to find the last quiet question. "How will I find Harry?"

He looks at her then, slowly and carefully, before he answers. "The night that Voldemort-" (she flinches at the name. Dumbledore always told them not to, but she never managed to fully shake herself of it, and now here, with the memory of sobbing for her son, of the flash of green light still fresh in her mind, it's even harder not to) "-came after the Potters – came after you and your family – something went wrong." He pauses for another long moment, and she swears she can almost feel the wood of his desk splintering beneath her fingers. "Harry survived the curse, Lily. He's alive."


	3. Chapter 3

He'd considered it for what seemed like an eternity when she'd asked, "Can I see him?" before, finally, he'd nodded and then smiled - in that order, his smile loose and nervous, and she's not sure exactly what to think of that but still, his answer had her heart pounding in her chest, thrumming just under her skin like something wild and barely contained. He'd lead her through another door in his office to a bedroom in the back, and then to a fireplace large and spacious enough to fit them both. "Anti-apparition wards," he'd offered as explanation, but she didn't ask, didn't care, had only waited restlessly as he'd thrown the powder into the flames and then blindly followed him through them. Now, waiting in a large, empty house - alone - she's starting to question whether that was wise.

The man had seemed friendly enough, had been kind and careful with her at Hogwarts, but after he left she realized she'd never even asked his name. He'd explained the house was Sirius's ("Nice to see somewhere familiar?" he'd asked when he'd lead her to the sitting room, and then explained when she didn't understand, and then had even touched her delicately on the shoulder when she'd asked, "Sirius?" voice high and tight and careful - she hadn't the strength or nerve to ask about anyone else after that), but though Sirius might've once lived there the house is still the Black family manor.

It's heavy, dark inside the house, and something feels sharp and dangerous in the rooms, like the family's magic still lurks. The family tapestry still hangs on the wall, Sirius and others burned out of evidence, and his mother's portrait had shrieked and screamed at her when she'd opened the curtains until an ancient looking house elf had come to shove her away, close the curtains, and then ignore her entirely, grumbling to himself all the while. This may have been Sirius's house, but it was also his family's, and the man who'd brought her here - he could be anyone, could be a Death Eater, one of You-Know-Who's disciples who'd recognized her and brought her to this old magic, old blood house so He could come and finish the job. Her mouth goes dry and she forces herself to stop considering all of the terrible possibilities. He'd been kind and he'd seem to know how to find Harry for her and she doesn't know where else to go, who else to turn to (who's left to turn to) anyway.

It seems like it's been a full hour by the time someone comes, and she can hear them out on the building's stoop from where she paces in the sitting room, too antsy and sick to sit for too long. She's not sure whether to meet them at the door or hide, suddenly more aware than ever that she doesn't have her wand to protect herself with, and she remembers training with the rest of the Order, learning how to fight with her fists, learning how to run away, but something in her freezes, feet stuck to the floor in the doorway to the hall, as the door opens. And then Minerva McGonagall steps through and Lily's moving, gasping and stumbling forward to throw her arms around the woman, bury her face in her robes.

The professor is shushing her, one hand on Lily's shoulder and the other patting the back of her head, and it isn't until Lily finally pulls away that she realizes she'd started crying. She's got her hand on Professor McGonagall's cheek before she processes that she's moved, and she's never touched her like this, so familiarly, and the feeling that she shouldn't, that she should move her hand builds and builds until McGonagall's hand comes up to meet it, hold it there, and then she feels nothing but warm. She and Professor McGonagall stand there, still, for a long moment until Minerva finally steps back, letting go of Lily's hand so that she can grasp both of her shoulders and look her in the eye.

"What did you say to me at your house on that first morning?" Minerva asks, and Lily would almost be thrown if they hadn't drilled this into her in the Order, if she hadn't been through her questions with everyone until they were second nature.

"I said, 'I know already, Sevy's told me all about it.'"

Professor McGonagall nods, firmly, and then she reaches to smooth Lily's hair again and Lily's throat is so thick she can hardly get her own question out. "How many detentions did you give me in school?"

"Twelve," Professor McGonagall answers, and she almost smiles, her mouth tight and drawn but curled at the edges.

"And how many of Filch's detentions did you excuse?"

"Fourteen."

With that Lily's satisfied, relief welling in her chest, and she buries herself back in McGonagall's robes again, breathes in deeply and allows herself a moment before she steps away to examine McGonagall's face.

"That man," Lily starts.

"Neville," the professor corrects her before she can finish. "Neville Longbottom. He's our Herbology professor now."

"Neville," Lily breathes, and she feels so empty for a second that she nearly stops breathing. Neville, little Neville, the baby only a day older than her own son and so large now, so strong, a professor at Hogwarts. He'd explained it had been a long time – twenty-three years if her maths were right, but she hadn't thought – hadn't really considered – Neville, the boy almost exactly Harry's age, and a grown man now. Older than her.

Professor McGonagall's hand is at her elbow and Lily lets herself be lead back into the sitting room, deposited on a couch with a summoned tea cup placed in her hand. Hot water spouts from the other woman's wand and a tea bag comes zooming in from the kitchen, but the feel of the cup hot between her hands is enough.

"He killed us," she says dully once she's found her voice again, and when she looks up the professor is watching her closely.

"But Harry lived."

"Harry lived."

It still doesn't seem real, none of it, even after McGonagall's tried to explain, explain about her love and sacrifice and the magic in Petunia's blood because of the magic in her own. She hadn't told her everything, only the basics, and even an hour later, as Professor McGonagall is preparing more tea (in the kitchen this time, and Lily supposes that means that she's stable enough to be left alone), she still can't quite fight through the fog in her brain to understand it all. But Harry lived. Harry is alive, and it's all that matters.

At least until he walks through the door, tall and lanky and messy-haired, looking so much like James and so much like she could've never pictured, sweet and brilliant and kind and impossibly familiar.

"Er, hi, mum," he says, and she loses her breath so quickly that she nearly chokes.


	4. Chapter 4

She doesn't want his first impression of her to be a bad one. She knows it's ridiculous, his first impression, as if he isn't her baby, isn't the son she loved and protected and hid for over a year, the son she held in her arms and died for only hours ago – but then he isn't. It's been over twenty years for him and he was too little to remember anything from before and so now, standing in the ancestral Black family home, this is the first time he's meeting her. And she doesn't want to muck it up.

She swallows that horrible scratchiness in the back of her throat and stands, but she's holding her whole body so tightly in an effort not to fall apart that her muscles nearly don't quite cooperate.

"Harry," she says once she's on her feet, and it comes out almost like a question, as if she's making sure, but twenty years or not she'd recognize him anywhere under any circumstances, her son looking so much like his father and yet so much himself, too.

He nods and smiles, nerves pulling sporadically at the corner of his mouth, and he waits for her to come to him. She does, hands trembling so hard she almost doesn't dare to touch him with them, but then one hand comes up of its own volition to muss his hair.

"I can never get it to lay flat, not even in the bath," she tells him, her smile small and suddenly watery, and then he's hugging her, his hands bunching in the sides of her jumper and his head clumsily nudging at her shoulder and she holds him so closely that she can't hold herself together anymore.

They stay like that a long time, long enough for Lily to finally stop shaking, long enough for her to regain some semblance of control and lead Harry back to the couch to sit. She wipes at her cheeks with the backs of her hands and then smoothes his hair again, keeps one of his hands in hers, and she can't stop just looking at him, drinking in every bit of him, his nose, his cheeks, his thick glasses and the green, green eyes behind them, the scar on his head –

"You look exactly like the pictures," he says, quiet, with a sort of sad smile.

"You look so much like…" she starts and then falters, reaching out to brush her fingers over his cheek.

"Like dad?" he asks and something in her squeezes, hard and painful, and her hand tightens on his for a second before it passes.

"Like you," she finishes, and he grins. It's striking how familiar that smile is and suddenly she can't help thinking about how many of them she never got the chance to see, never got the chance to cause or give, and her voice warbles when she finally babbles, "I missed so much, didn't I? I missed everything, all of it, I couldn't protect you –"

"You did," he cuts her off then. "What you did – it was what saved me, over and over again." He tells her about it, about how it kept him safe at the Dursleys', protected him when he went after the stone, how she came to him in the graveyard and in the forest. He tells her about everything then or tries, explaining about school and his friends and seeing the thestrals, about running and Quidditch and the Chamber of Secrets, some of it mere mentions and others described in thick, heavy detail. Whenever he starts or stumbles, she squeezes his hand or asks a question and hearing it, hearing everything – she can't imagine how he's managed through so much, to survive at every turn, but he's here and he's alive and he made it despite it all.

By the time he's finished it's late, and he's still got a thousand questions for her but she's faltering, slow and sluggish and then McGonagall's back. She must've left at some point, hours ago, but she comes back in from down the hall levitating fresh linens beside her, and gives that tight pursed lip look that Lily knows, beyond all appearances, is fond.

"You may stay here for the night, until we find somewhere more suitable for you," McGonagall explains, and Lily nods. "I'll stay here with you, of course, Mr. Potter I'm sure must have work in the morning."

"That's all right," Harry says quickly, and there's an edge of something not quite distinguishable in his voice. "I can stay here with her – I'll owl Ginny, she won't mind, and I've got an extra sick day or two I can use."

Minerva gives another of those secretly fond looks, but waits a moment before she nods. "All right then. I'll leave you two to it and I'll be back in the morning." She sets the linens down and Lily stands to give her one last hug which McGonagall accepts, albeit a bit stiffly before she pats Lily's shoulder goodnight.

And then it's just the two of them again, Harry leading her up the stairs and through the house, explaining all the while how there are plenty of free rooms and that his friend Ron's mum Mrs. Weasley had made them all scrub the whole place down, chase out all the dark magic and creatures lurking and banish them from the house. "The only things she didn't manage to get rid of where the pin-up posters in Sirius's room," he adds with a sheepish grin, and something about it slams into her, nearly knocks her back a step.

"Can I see his room?" she asks, suddenly nervous and needing, and he nods and leads the way.

It's just how she might have imagined it and she laughs out loud. There're Gryffindor banners and pennants everywhere, half-naked women smiling down at her from all of the walls, and little knick-knacks scattered throughout the room. It's messy, as if no one's touched it since he left when he was sixteen, and she remembers the story of how hastily he packed, throwing everything he could grab into a trunk and storming off. Still, she wonders if he didn't purposely leave some of this behind to spite his family, the Muggle records and magazines and posters a pointed reminder of his beliefs.

"Would it – would it be all right if I slept in here?" she asks, and then almost immediately wishes she could take it back. Harry had mentioned what had happened to Sirius only in the vaguest terms, but still, there must be a reason that even after nine years no one's seemed to have touched anything or tidied up. "Actually, I don't want to mess anything up –" she starts when Harry hesitates, but then he shakes his head.

"No, you should," he says quickly then, "someone should stay in here – and I'll be just downstairs in one of the guest rooms if you need anything, the second door on the left, and the bathroom is just through there." He points to a door tucked into a corner of the room and, with a flick of his wand, it opens and the towels he's been holding zoom through to fold themselves on a shelf. He turns back to the sloppy bed and the blankets strip themselves and disappear into an already stuffed hamper by the closet, the fresh linens tucking themselves nicely around the mattress and enveloping the pillows.

He lingers for a moment longer, the comforter pulling itself up to the top of the bed and then turning back down, and then he's hugging her again, his head back at her shoulder in a messily-coordinated goodnight. And then he's gone and she's left to explore the room, find the picture of the four of them, so little and young, plastered to the wall. James, Sirius, Remus, even Peter – all gone, no matter what happened before. One edge of the photograph is curling. She presses it back down, holding it until it finally sticks, and then climbs into the bed. The lights dim on their own, and it's not long after folding herself into the blankets until she's asleep.


End file.
